This week’s episode begins with a scene where two rival houses, the Blackwoods and Brackens, under the House of Tully, are seen squaring off. These miscreants are like the Hatfields and McCoys of Westeros, who use their respective allegiances to Team Black and Team Green as a pretext to settle old scores and fight a bloody border war.

As the camera pans over the grisly scene, we see the recently murdered Lord Samuel Blackwood with a sword lodged in his throat. We spot a dead cow (yes, even Betsy wasn’t spared) and thousands of blood-spattered bodies rotting while an old tattered windmill spins impotently in the foetid air. It is a grotesque charnel-house battlefield that shows the true horror of war: the Battle of the Burning Mill, the title of this week’s episode.

The camera cuts to Dragonstone and Rhaenyra as she buries Erryk and Arryk (Elliott and Luke Tittensor), while Rhaenys (Eve Best) shows up with some wise counsel, telling her that Otto Hightower had no part in this dastardly act.

“Hotter blood prevailed,” Rhaenys concludes.

“Soon they will not even remember what began the war in the first place,” Rhaenys muses.
Rhaenyra remembers though. She interjects that it was that precise moment when they conspired to take her throne. Rhaenyra sure has a one track mind.

Rhaenys insists that Alicent Hightower doesn’t want the war, especially a ‘war between dragons’, planting the seed for a brilliant but highly unlikely scene: a fateful conversation between Alicent and Rhaenyra.

The camera cuts to King’s Landing where Ser Christian Cole (Fabian Frankel) faces the fallout from his failed execution of Rhaenyra. Ser Cole’s kingsguard has suffered a major fall in discipline since his promotion to Hand of the King, and the King has filled positions with his loutish drinking buddies. Cole descends the stairs and spots Aegon II’s knights lounging around.

Cole doesn’t even wear the pin of the Hand of the King, preferring to stick it on his assigned chair in the Small Council. He picks up this weird big marble and sits down to hear the ruminations of the day. Master of Coin Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) announces that his twin brother, Jason (also Jefferson Hall), is assembling an army at Casterly Rock. They bicker amongst themselves. King Aegon is anxious to ride out on his dragon to war but they convince him of the folly of such an act, and they finally agree to dispatch Ser Cole to subdue the Riverlands.

Rhaenyra unveils her plan to ship off her children with Rhaena , the younger of the two daughters that Daemon had with his late wife Laena, to her cousin Lady Jeyne Arryn in the Vale for safety. She wants Rhaena to go with them. The dragonless Rhaena mentions the dragons Tyraxes and Stormcloud and later, as she departs with the kids, we see four new dragon eggs.

Next up we see that Daemon has abandoned Rhaenyra and headed off to the moldering ruins of Harrenhal, the largest castle and key to the important Riverlands region. After landing his dragon, Caraxes, he sneaks into the crumbling gothic castle by himself and pummels a guard before breaking into the dining hall where he finds the pragmatic and most excellent warden Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale), who promptly bends the knee without a fight and offers him a less than desirable dinner of venison and peas. Daemon refuses to eat even as the castellan Ser Strong tries to convince him that he is welcome there.

Daemon is (predictably) a rude guest, insisting that Ser Strong address him as ‘your grace’ and unveils his own ill-conceived plan to grab the Iron Throne.

It is here we are introduced to a mysterious female servant with piercing eyes and striking black hair, Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), who eyes Daemon like a juicy steak and then later, tells a sleepwalking Daemon that Harrenhal is the place where he will die.

One of the most telling scenes comes later with Daemon at Harrenhal where he dreams of his wife, Rhaenyra as a young girl (fans will love the return of Milly Alcock), who calmly stitches li’l dead Jaehaerys’ head back onto his body. Daemon shows remorse and appears horrified, maybe because few love to see the sins they commission come to ghoulish life. Freud would have had a field day dissecting why Daemon is not talking to his wife but is dreaming of her as a young girl. Naughty, naughty, naughty.

The camera cuts to King’s Landing where Ser Cole and Alicent Hightower share a frosty send off as he heads into battle, with a new companion, Alicent’s older brother, Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), who returns to the show for the first time since season 1, episode 1’s jousting competition. Fox needs to have a talk with his agent.

Meanwhile, dysfunction is also afoot in Rhaenyra’s camp at the Painted Table which appears to be loaded with a lot of pasty white guys, the Ditherers of Dragonstone, as Lord Corlys calls them. They suggest shipping her off to safety and running the show themselves, offering a ‘source of distraction’, if this war is too much for her to bear. “Treason?” Rhaenyra asks coyly. They shut up quickly. No one wants to end up as a side order of barbecued pork.

Much of this episode seems to centre around men dismissing women as equals: Alicent and Ser Cole with the Hand dismissing her ideas at the Small Council, and then, with Rhaenys and Corlys when he abruptly ends a convo in the shipyard which is cleverly staged with the couple separated by a crossbeam, dismissing her idea to make Rhaena the heir of Driftmark and mocks her concerns for his safety.

This theme continues with Daemon apparently abandoning Rhaenyra to conduct his own war in the Riverlands and pursue his own ambitions. Women, it appears, get little R-E-S-P-E-C-T in Westeros.
As usual, we can expect the obligatory brothel scene (the real reason we watch every week). And this week’s scene is juicier than ever with full frontal nudity and a sex scene that not even Spartacus: Blood and Sand was able to pull off in decadent Rome. Watch it twice and you will catch what I am hinting at.

The one-eyed prince, Aemond, (Ewan Mitchell) is at his psycho best as he responds to his brother and liege’s taunting by standing up buck naked, dismissing the idea of his preferred whore breaking in a young squire with a nonchalant “one whore is as good as another”. He then strolls out, still buck naked, with a stone-faced expression. Expect bloodshed young squire. You have been warned. This will not be forgotten.

One interesting narrative thread that pops up is that of Seasmoke flitting over Dragonstone and crying out in a heartbreaking and agitated manner. Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) suggests that the dragon is lonely, perhaps hinting that a new rider is on the horizon. Who will it be?

Speaking of dragons, Ser Cole experiences the petrifying jolt of human-versus-dragon warfare when Baela (Bethany Antonia) spots them on Moondancer and swoops down on them in a breakneck dragon chase. Criston and Gwayne turn tail and hide in the woods. They look like they just made chocolate in their armour but Criston gains Gwayne’s respect.

From a story perspective, the episode’s biggest moment arrived right near the end with a convo between Rhaenyra and Alicent Hightower, former-friends-turned-rivals-turned-mateys. Who would have thought they would ever get to share screen time again?

The security in the Red Keep is apparently horrendous. With Mysaria’s help, Rhaenyra successfully sneaks in as a nun for a surprise chat with Alicent. Remember how Tyrion sneaked back in to meet with his brother centuries later in Game of Thrones? This is like that. Dreadful security. Just awful. Hope our local security firms are taking note.

It is interesting that no one finds it strange that Alicent and a nun are involved in a hissing, antagonistic convo at an altar filled with candles. Rhaenyra still wishes to avert war. “Men seek blood,” she tells Alicent. “I know you do not have that desire within you.” They exchange ardent apologies and ya-di-ya-ya.

Then they discuss how the late and woozy King Viserys, who had proclaimed his daughter, Rhaenyra, to be his heir suddenly changed his mind and told Queen Alicent that Aegon, must be the one to unite the realm, mentioning the prophecy of “The Prince That Was Promised”.

Realisation dawns on Rhaenyra’s face and she nevertheless clings to a faint hope, dismissing it as “just a story he used to tell …the Song of Ice and Fire… about Aegon the Conqueror”. She offers clarification and insists: It’s a mistake! A terrible war is brewing, and thousands of lives could be saved! But Alicent says it’s far too late, Cole is on the march, her father is no longer in court. She’s all in (evil laugh). The die is cast.

More bloodshed appears to be in the offing as the episode concludes as it does, dashing any dreams of repentance, rapprochement or conciliation. Enough already! Bring on the dragon-on-dragon conflict. We can’t wait.